Avoiding eye injuries during the holidays

Thursday

Dec 27, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 27, 2012 at 3:59 PM

Setting up and decorating Christmas trees is a wonderful experience, unless you poke your eye with a branch. Unfortunately, it’s fairly easy to do and quite common. Statistics show that one-half of eye injuries occur in the home, with a high percentage of those coming as the result of an object striking the eye. So when stringing those lights, or unstringing the lights and taking down the decorations and tree after the holidays, be sure to guard your eyes. Like Ralphie’s good fortune of wearing glasses prevented his eye from being “put out”, wearing glasses can come in handy to (hopefully) stop the branch – or other foreign objects – from hitting or entering your eye. So if you don’t normally wear glasses, perhaps donning some safety goggles, or if fashion is a concern – sunglasses, might be in order when trimming the tree.

While children age 17 and younger make up about one-third of the nation’s eye injuries - Boston Children’s Hospital seeing about 19,000 cases of eye injury each year – emergency room visits for eye injuries have statistically been highest for the 18 to 44 age bracket. Of all emergency room visits, 19% were the result of accidently hitting an object or being hit by an object. (Source: Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project; Boston Children’s Hospital Dept. of Ophthalmology.)

So keep your eyes wide open to the possible perils that can befall the eye within your home such as open cabinets and loose hangers on door hooks; using too much force to pull something or getting too close to something you’re hammering or stapling. Wear safety glasses or some eye shield to protect your eyes when working with things that can easily poke you such as plants, furniture, and in particular, Christmas trees! And don’t let vanity prevent you from being safe . . . goggles look better than a patch, and are a lot less painful!

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